Chair's Letter

Academic Year 2009/2010

Whether you are an old friend or newcomer, welcome to the Department of Politics!

You will notice among our faculty many new faces. Over 1/3 of our faculty have come to UVA in the past five years. These new professors were highly recruited by others and hail from the best universities in the nation. We are delighted to have them as colleagues. They bring cutting edge methodological skills, a deep expertise in their respective areas, and an ambition to make Mr. Jefferson’s University THE place to study all facets of politics.

Our new arrivals join a faculty already distinguished by a passion for asking big questions, a reputation for writing important books, and an unrelenting drive for substantive knowledge. The fusion of experienced hands and new blood makes UVA an exciting place to explore the pressing political issues of our times.

The Department is on the move. An outside review concluded that UVA Politics is “on a trajectory that is sharply upward” and is “poised to become a leading center for the study of politics and government in the United States.” The Department “offers the university an important opportunity to consolidate its national reputation for excellence in research as well as teaching.” We are encouraged and energized by their report and suggestions.

Faculty members have been very productive (see Department Newsletters ) . Since 2000, Politics professors have produced some 60 books, many of which have appeared in top university and commercial presses, including Cambridge, Princeton, Oxford, Chicago, Yale, Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford. The 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (produced by Academic Analytics) ranked the Department 10th in the nation. Our political theory group is consistently ranked in the top ten in the country. And for the first time in several decades we moved up in the US News and World Report rankings of political science departments.

UVA Politics has notable strengths in such areas as political theory, great power relations, democratization, race and politics, political economy, elections and campaigns, U.S. foreign policy, and American political thought and development. We have an unusual ability to connect international politics to politics within particular countries (and the reverse). The faculty has rich knowledge of key regions such as Russia, China, the Middle East, Europe, Japan, India, Africa, and the Americas. Our scholars aim both to advance debates within the academy and to connect their work to contemporary problems.

Politics is one of the most in-demand - and demanding - departments at Mr. Jefferson’s university. Students who find their way here are inspired by professors who take teaching and mentoring seriously and joyfully. Professor Stephen White received an All-University Teaching Award and has been nominated for a statewide award. And we are inspired by our students who regularly garner notable undergraduate awards - including in recent years Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Watson and Fulbright Fellowships. They also go on to top tier graduate programs in law, business, public policy and many social science disciplines. And they are recruited for demanding jobs in business, government, non-profits, and yes, politics.

Our graduate program is thriving. UVA Politics Ph.D.s are finding jobs in top 60 research universities and small liberal arts colleges – including placements last year at NYU and Wesleyan University. Moreover, the Department continued its strong record of placing our students in significant public and private sector organizations. They are remarkably successful at turning their work into books and articles. Just this year, they placed articles in Comparative Political Studies and Polis. One graduate student, Davis Brown, published his first book, The Sword, the Cross, and the Eagle: The American Christian Just War Tradition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) last year. And several of our recent grads published their revised dissertations and other work as books – E.g. see William Walldorf, Just Politics: Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of Great Powers (Cornell University Press, 2008) and I just received Alice Ba’s ( Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Regions, Regionalisms, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford University Press 2009).

So if you are interested in local, national, or global politics, you will find something of interest, and much of excellence, in the links on this page.

Please take a look - and do not hesitate to contact us with your questions and suggestions at uva-pol@virginia.edu .